10 Minutes For The Planet Earth Overshoot Day © by Valentine Rinner Vocabulary & pronunciation study by Sue Thomas © Words are explained alongside the text Stressed syllables are underlined and in bold*

Hi everyone! And welcome to this week’s episode of Ten minutes for the Planet. August 2nd was 2017's Earth Overshoot Day, for about a decade it has been 5 or 6 days earlier each year!

Earth Over shoot Day is not the most fun day of all as it whole (adj.) complete marks the day when we the Earth’s inhab itants have used up more from nature than our planet can renew in a whole year. More spe cif ically it is when we have used “more overfishing (n.) fishing in an ecological resources and services than natur e can unsustainable way re ge nerate through overfishing , overharvesting forests and emit ting more carbon dioxide into the at mosphere than forests can sequester ”. overharvesting (n.) farming in an unsustainable way The earlier the Earth Overshoot Day falls, the more rapidly we’ve been con sum ing the Earth’s natural resources generated during the year. If Earth Overshoot Day were to to sequester (vb.) to capture fall on December 31st, it would mean that we had managed to take exactly what the Earth had to offer all of us for the year, no more no less. to mana ge (vb.) to succeed in When it was first con ceived by the UK-based New doing Economics Foundation, in partnership with the Global Footprint Network in 2006, Earth Overshoot Day fell in October. In only 10 years it has moved forward by 2 and a to estimate (vb.) to calculate half months… however if we cal culate the Earth Overshoot approximately Day country by country the results are quite different.

The Global Footprint Network estimates how many Earths we would be needed if the global popu la tion lived like any given population. Today we consume 1.6 times the Earth’s capacity but if we all lived the same way as Amer icans or Aus tra lians we would need about 5 planet Earths to fulfill our needs. Earth to fulfill (vb .) to satisfy Overshoot Day would fall mid-March. If everyone lived as the French do, we would need 3 planet Earths. Earth early (adv.) near the Overshoot Day would fall early May. beginning Countries such as India are still under the consumption limit of what the Earth produces in a year - meaning that Earth as a whole (exp.) in general Overshoot Day doesn't exist - but those countries are very few. As a whole , we are rapidly draining the Earth's to drain (vb.)to empty resources and even entering a vi cious circle as we are slowly hindering its ca pac ity to renew and provide for us. to hinder (vb.) to cause delay We need to make a whole lot of progress in terms of how or difficulty we manage our resources if we want to move Earth Overshoot Day back towards New Year's Eve. And a whole lot (exp.) a great deal un for tunately it’s going to take a heck of a lot more than recycling our Christmas champagne bottles. heck (intensifier) used to Getting involved in the en vi ronmental debate in our daily emphasize feelings about the amount lives can be quite difficult and sometimes un com fortable , as we all know there are many ster eotypes attached to the issues and those who fight them. There is also large-scale disinformation (n.) false information disinformation as a lot is at stake for various major industries, but also more funda men tally for the way we conduct our collective lives in the Western world. at stake (idiom.) at risk For me the first step is to increase our own awareness ; start to conduct (vb.) to organise noticing how we personally relate to what the Earth provides, namely 99% of what we eat, wear, build and use; awareness (n.) having to look at a specific habit we have that we may question knowledge and makes us uneasy at times and get informed on how it affects the Earth; and of course to continue listening to Ten minutes for the planet! Bye everyone, see you next week!

*Tip! Syllable Stress can help us to understand spoken words, let’s take the words

'calculate' and 'calculation' as an example.

First count the syllables: 'cal•cu•late' has 3 syllables, 'cal•cu•la•tion' has 4 syllables

Syllable Stress is when you say one of the syllables slightly louder and with more emphasis. So in this example we say: cal culate and calcu la tion